


old ends, new beginnings, and everything inbetween

by ladykestrel



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4317507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykestrel/pseuds/ladykestrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or the au in which skye has been running the secret warriors for a while now and ward wants in on the action.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allthesongsmakesense](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthesongsmakesense/gifts).



One wall was made entirely of glass, a lot like the S.H.I.E.L.D. director’s own office. She kept her eyes trained on the constantly moving silhouettes on the opposite side.

Her breathing remained the same. But it was to be expected, she figured, when she’d gone through immense training to keep her heartbeat as steady as possible. This was not the calm before the storm. It was a curtain of appeasement concealing a hurricane.

His fingertips tapped against the chair’s arm. She felt each tap vibrating through her. Her head, however, did not turn to the sound. Another show of her new-found discipline. The tapping was replaced by silence.

Not that Skye would ever feel the silence again. After going through the mist, she found the world was never mute. Sometimes the knowledge was comforting.

And other times, it wasn’t.

Skye wished he hadn’t insisted on talking here when she’d much preferred the neutral, impersonal space of the training rooms. She would have settled for the coffee room, as well. Anywhere with people.

Instead, Skye found herself in her office, sitting across from a man she never could seem to escape.

“Is this how all your meetings go?” She could more feel his smirk than see it. “I must say, it’s a peculiar tactic. Does it work often?”

Skye tensed her jaw, the only tell of her imbalance. A model plane swayed from the ceiling. The slight movement was immediately brought to his attention. Of course. “When did you get that?”

“I had it custom made.” It was the first time she’d spoken.

“Of course. One of a kind. Like the real thing.”

A file cabinet rattled as Skye shut her eyes tight. The everything ceased. It was like she’d stopped time. She wished she had that ability. Sighing, she said, “Get to the point.”

“The straightforward approach. You’ve come a long way, Skye.” She felt a tremor slide up her arms. It’s been a long time since she’d gotten bruises from her abilities, and even longer since she’d last heard her name, the one she chose for herself.

She still didn’t look at him.

“Alright, cutting to the chase.” Grant Ward shifted in his seat. He rested his elbows on the arms and leaned forward. She felt each movement resonate in her bones. “I want to join your team.”

Skye squeezed her hands into tight fists to keep the floor from quaking. She hated how much he could still affect her, even after all this time. “You’ve been offered positions on several different units, but you refused each and every one.” Her tone was clinical, detached. It was what Fitz called her ‘director voice’.

“None of those offers were of interest to me.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “C’mon, Skye,” he continued, and the familiarity of that phrase alone had her scales on the verge of tipping, “are you really going to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. We know each other too well.”

Her nails were digging into the flesh of her palms. “We don’t. Not anymore.”

“We used to be close,” he said.

“Not anymore,” Skye repeated. A ghost appeared in the room, possessed her body, spoke through her lips.

“That can change.”

She thought back to the girl with her long curly hair and all her belongings in a cardboard box. She thought of the woman now, with the short wavy hair and all the responsibility she held. Yes, Skye agreed, things can change. Thing do change. And they have. Drastically. Irrevocably.

“Your request has been denied.” It was all she said.

He must have noticed how intent on not looking like she was trying not to look at him she was. Grant Ward noticed everything. “I didn’t figure you to be one to let your emotions dictate your decisions, Daisy.”

“I make my decisions however I want,” Skye snapped. She immediately chastised herself for sounding so much like a child.

“Of course you do.” Ward chuckled. “Give me one good reason why.”

This time, she wouldn’t blurt out the first thing that came to mind. “You are not skilled enough to join my team.”

“Bullshit.”

They both knew it was.

She focused on slowing her rapidly beating heart.

Out of the corner of her eye, Skye saw his eye trail to a bobble head perched on the window sill. “Nice memento,” he said.

Skye pursed her lips. The Quake figurine had been a present from Simmons. She remembered the jokes that had gone around when she received it. “We used to be so careful,” she said softly.

She didn’t know why she said it, in truth. Perhaps, it was a reflex. Perhaps, it was nostalgia.

Perhaps, it was the longing to fall back into old habits with the person she used to share them with.

Ward looked back at her, but Skye still refused to meet his eyes. She busied herself with watching how her plastic head wobbled.

There used to be a time where the thought of powered people and aliens being public knowledge was unthinkable. Then, it was the thought of powered people and aliens being accepted by society.

It has been a long way and Skye had fought through hell to get where things were now.

She finally looked at the man sitting before her. She saw a million faces, all different, yet all the same. She saw an agent and a liar, a friend and a betrayer, a protector and a monster. Grant Ward has been so many things to her - a mentor, an ally, an almost, an enemy.

There was one thing he hasn’t been to her.

He has never allowed himself to become a memory.

And Skye wasn’t sure she wanted him to be one, either.

“You’ll have to prove you’re good enough,” she said. Because things did change, and they ended. But after the end, came a beginning. She and Ward were ready for a new one. “You have one chance. Don’t blow it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which skye brings a whole building down and contemplates whether or not saving ward is worth it.

Out of control. Escalating so fast. It all took a moment. 

It was not supposed to go like this. 

Skye’s mind was on autopilot, only vaguely aware of the speed she was running at. The reassuring thumps of her teammates’ footsteps running alongside her were not there. She felt their absence like a phantom limb.

She had been stupid enough to think she could do this on her own. 

At the time, this mission had not seemed at all dangerous. Just a harmless friendly extraction. How terribly wrong that thought had been.

As she drew neared, Skye’s nose filled with the sensation of something burning. She could practically feel smoke on the tip of her tongue. In her experience, fire never meant anything good.

She ran faster.

The abandoned warehouse’s doors were flung open and sounds of fighting were resonating from the inside. The heat was getting more and more intrusive. How much of the building was actually ablaze?

It had been stupid to without a team, Skye admitted. But it had been even stupider to let Ward in first. Perhaps the stupidest was that she had actually gave him permission to come along on this. She was feeling the repercussions of that choice across her skin, sliding down her forehead as Skye entered the warehouse. The first thing she saw were the flames. 

The she heard a crash to her left and immediately turned her head in that direction. Ward had collided with an empty stillage. An invisible force dragged him up by his sleeve. Skye watched, dumbfounded, as Ward’s head was knocked back, blood starting to trickle from his nose. 

Ward staggered, struggling to regain composure. The fallen stillage had burst into flames. 

Skye sent a seismic blast through the air. Something hit the opposing wall.

A man flickered in and out of view. He appeared to be young, perhaps as young as Ward had been when Skye first met him. His body was fit, but it was clear he was no experienced fighter. Blond hair was touching the tips of his shoulders.

Over by the newly set fire, Ward was wiping his nose with a shirtsleeve. He spit crimson on the floor. Skye looked away from him, setting her eyes on her current mission. She advanced toward the man. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she told him. Her hands were up, trying to appease him like one would appease a wild animal. She found that that sometimes helped. 

But other times, not so much.

The man leapt up and lunged for her. Just before he reached Skye, his body evaporated into thin air. Moving on instinct, Skye evaded the punch, despite her invisible opponent. A moment later, a blow hit her in her side. Skye kicked at air, hoping to meet with any body part. No matter how good of a fighter she’d become, her skills were rendered useless against an unseen foe. A ghost of a hand wrapped around her wrist and flipped her backward. Skye fell on her back. Her palm sent tremors through the ground. The man’s form reappeared as he lost balance and fell to the floor. She was on him in an instant. The two of them rolled on the granite floor before the man finally managed to shake Skye off. Now standing, both sides regarded each other as their chests rose and fell with heavy breaths. Right before the man could turn invisible again, something hit him across his back, causing him to lurch forward. 

Skye looked up to see Ward, gipping a now flaming pipe in his hands. “Years of combat training and that’s the best you could do?” She smirked.

“Had to act quickly, you seemed to be in quite the situation there. I had to save you.”

“Save me?” Skye scoffed. “As if I need saving.”

Ward reflected her previous smirk. “Even the greatest heroes sometimes need a hand, Skye.”

She was about to give a sarcastic reply, but it was lost on her tongue. Skye felt a throb in her head that knocked her to the ground. Pain stretched itself all over, clouding her vision. Black spots appeared and Skye tried to blink them away, ineffectively. She managed to see Ward swing the pipe again, maniacally swiping at the air. The man flickered in and out of invisibility, taunting Ward. He was fast, this man. And resilient. He’d gathered himself pretty quickly from Ward’s blow. Skye was beginning to rethink her previous statement.

It was clear – unlike Skye’s vision – that they would not win. Not unless she did something. Ward was only getting angrier, each swing becoming more reckless than the other. The taunts were getting to him, worming themselves inside his mind, pulling at the strings. He no longer thought rationally. And the fires he set grew, as if fueled by their creator’s rage. Soon the entire warehouse would catch aflame.

Suddenly Skye was stuck with a thought. She felt terrible for even allowing it to pop into her head. But she couldn’t deny the possibility. This was her chance to get rid of Grant Ward. She had allowed him on her team on a whim, to see if he really were serious about redemption. But a small part of her had agreed, only on the smallest hope of Ward getting into a situation like this and, ultimately, meeting his end. That small part of her rejoiced now, as Skye saw him battle with air through her hooded eyes. 

The ground began to tremble. Just a little at first, then the tremors grew. Soon the whole building’s construction rattled from the force of her vibrations. Skye felt the architecture would soon give. Her power intensified, forwarding the process. She struggled to get on her feet, and when she finally did, Skye glanced at her teammate. He and the invisibility man were still fighting, each other and the earthquake. The pipe in Ward’s hands was blazing with an almost blue hue.

Feeling a grain of guilt in the pit of her stomach, Skye staggered toward the warehouse’s exit. The foundation was finally coming down, the walls no longer strong enough to sustain against her strength, and she had to get out of there quickly before the ceiling toppled over her. 

Skye was almost at the doors when a scream made her whirl back. The man was flashing into visibleness in a rapid pace as he struggled to move a large fallen piece of metal. Blood began to stain the front of his shirt where the metal was digging into the man’s stomach. Skye pried her eyes away. Involuntarily, she searched the perimeter. 

Ward had been knocked a few feet away from his opponent. A stillage had fallen over him, pinning his entire body, face first, to the ground. He was making no attempt to move or crawl out from under it. The stillage must have hit him hard on the head, rendering him unconscious, Skye realized. Rubble was falling from the ceiling more rapidly now, and the metal poles on the walls were starting to bend and break under the quake’s force. She looked at Ward, his lifeless body caught under the wreckage. 

As she regarded him, Skye some distance away – back in time, some thousand miles up in the air. She saw Ward again, heaving and struggling against his slowly dying heart. She saw him on the floor, she heard his last breaths. She would have been responsible for his death, even if she hadn’t been the one to directly stop his heart’s beats. Despite the betrayal and disgust she’d felt then, she couldn’t have let Ward die. Not when she would be to blame.

Just as she would be now. This time, Skye would directly be responsible. Her powers caused this destruction. She’d been hoping, no matter how deep and dark that hope had been hidden, that somehow the earthquake would strike him too.

But she couldn’t let Ward die.

No matter what he did, how deep he cut her with his actions, Skye never seemed to be able to let Ward die. So she didn’t. 

The tricky thing with having the power to create a natural disaster was that she couldn’t take it back. Once going, it could not be stopped. The ground was no longer shaking, but the building had already lost its balance. Skye cursed her abilities for not having a reverse switch as she made her way carefully around the rubble. She cursed herself, as well, as she barely dodged a falling piece of metal.

It took a whole lot of strength – strength Skye wasn’t sure she’d be able to call upon, or that she even had – to get Ward out from under the stillage. He had been wedged in there pretty tightly, and of course, his frame was so much bigger and heavier than Skye’s. 

She still wasn’t sure if she’d felt relieved or disappointed when she’d reached out and felt the faint vibrations of Ward’s beating heart.

Hunching him up and throwing an arm around her shoulder, Skye tested out her steps. Her head was still throbbing and a slight dizziness had replaced the black spots. She was pretty sure the man had given her a nasty concussion. It was a miracle, Skye thought, that she was able to still stand on her own, let alone with the added weight. She started to feel optimistic.

Not for long, however, because just as Skye started for the main doors, chunks of the ceiling fell right where her next steps would have been. The path to their escape was now blocked with pieces of aluminium. Skye looked around. The only way was back, toward a wall. She had to give it a shot.

Skye wasn’t sure if her plan would work. But it was better to have tried and failed, than not tried at all.

She dragged Ward’s unresponsive body toward the wall. 

Putting a hand to it, Skye called on her power. She focused it all on the point where her palm met surface. The spot vibrated, struggling against the pressure. Skye forced more into her hand, pictured herself pushing and breaking a hole into the facade.

The wall shook with a blast, growing even more unstable. Skye stared at the outside of the warehouse. The gap she’d created was just large enough to squeeze a person through. She felt the tremors of a building about to fully collapse on itself. There was no time.

Somehow Skye managed to push Ward through the hole. Then, just in time, she pushed herself through it too. Wasting no time, she dragged the both of them away from the warehouse. Skye vowed to never again complain about May’s method of training. 

As Skye was trying to put a good distance between them and the collapsing architecture, she felt something rumble through the air. She then heard the wings of a helicopter slowly ease it to a descent. The flying vehicle hadn’t even properly landed before someone hopped off of it and ran straight to where she was standing.

Her teammates was here. They had come.

Skye’s face broke into a smile.

Everyone was furious with her, as if she wasn’t the director. Skye knew, however, that their anger was out of genuine concern. Her team had come to care for her, and each other, as she had come to care about them. 

The helicopter was ready to take off as Skye was just putting in the headphones. When they were finally up in the air, she glanced over at Ward, who still had not regained consciousness. He’d have to be thoroughly checked out by the medical team. Skye reached out for his heartbeat again, and this time she was sure it was relief she felt.

Despite what she might feel, or have felt, for Ward, she could not bring herself to truly regret saving him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all the thanks to [lily1986](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily1986/pseuds/Lily1986) for the fabulous idea of having skye save ward, instead of the other way around. this is such a mess, but i was in a hurry to write everything down. i hope you still somewhat enjoy it!


End file.
